Agrarian (In) Equality (and Dependency) vs Commerce and Liberty: Reconsidering the Relation between Constitutional Government and Economic Inequality in the American Republic

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay provides a critique of two recent books, by professors of law and political science, respectively, which argue that the economic inequality now found in the United States threatens the survival of free government: Ganesh Sitamaran’s The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution and Clement Fatovic’s America’s Founding and the Struggle over Economic Inequality. In each case I argue that the authors’ claim depends on an erroneous application of strictures by members of the Founding generation regarding the danger of excessively unequal agrarian holdings to our largely commercial-industrial economy, which offers far more opportunities for individuals to rise in life based on their own labor and enterprise, regardless of landholdings or inheritances. At the same time, it was the rise of commerce that undermined the power of the slavocracy, among whose members the most strident critics of economic inequality were often found. Finally, both Sitamaran and Fatovic advocate policies that would actually weaken the opportunity for ordinary people to advance in life, while also weakening the foundations of Constitutional liberty.